Youtube hearted comments of Dan (@Dan-ud8hz).

  1. “Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'” ― Isaac Asimov “It is necessary to take what is common as our guide; however, though this logic is universal, the many live as if each individual has his own private wisdom.” ― Heraclitus, Fragments
    1900
  2. “Society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.” ― Anonymous Greek Proverb
    249
  3. Trump does not sincerely or deeply believe anything. He's entirely superficial.
    239
  4. “Between the Christianity of this land and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest possible difference—so wide that to receive the one as good, pure, and holy, is of necessity to reject the other as bad, corrupt, and wicked. To be the friend of the one is of necessity to be the enemy of the other. I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ; I therefore hate the corrupt, slave-holding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land. Indeed, I can see no reason but the most deceitful one for calling the religion of this land Christianity…” ― Frederick Douglass
    190
  5. Oh snap, new Tasting History dropped AND it's about ancient cheesecake?! You've been saving this one for when we really needed it. Much appreciated!
    127
  6. "The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress." Frederick Douglass
    123
  7. Zorg's problematic argument is historically referred to as the "broken window fallacy".
    120
  8. Bernie can do some good with his new position in Congress, chairman of the Senate budget committee
    83
  9. "We are now in a position to understand the anti-Semite. He is a man who is afraid. Not of the Jews, to be sure, but of himself, of his own consciousness, of his liberty, of his instincts, of his responsibilities, of solitariness, of change, of society, and of the world of everything except the Jews." Jean-Paul Sartre
    79
  10. "Technological fixes are not always undesirable or inadequate, but there is a danger that what is addressed is not the real problem but the problem in as far as it is amendable to technical solutions." Engineering and the Problem of Moral Overload
    70
  11. “When I am working on a problem, I never think about beauty... but when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.” ― R. Buckminster Fuller
    70
  12. "The first man who, having fenced in a piece of land, said 'This is mine', and found people naïve enough to believe him, that man was the true founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody." — Jean-Jaques Rousseau, 1754
    68
  13. Love the speculating on healthy and admirable heroic folks!
    67
  14. “Factuality itself depends for its continued existence upon the existence of the nontotalitarian world.” “Before mass leaders seize the power to fit reality to their lies, their propaganda is marked by its extreme contempt for facts as such, for in their opinion fact depends entirely on the power of man who can fabricate it.” ― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism
    46
  15. "I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops." -- Stephen Jay Gould, The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History
    42
  16. “Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.” ― Jean Paul-Sartre
    20
  17. "As mortals, we’re ruled by conditions, not by ourselves." ― Bodhidharma "A man is worked upon by what he works on. He may carve out his circumstances, but his circumstances will carve him out as well." ― Frederick Douglass, The Portable Frederick Douglass
    9
  18. Have a good weekend, Doc!
    9
  19. "He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him." -- C.G. Jung, on Hitler and the Shadow "The embrace, by working Americans, of policies that hurt their own interests can be understood on the basis of Ferenczi’s model of identification with the aggressor. Intrafamilial child abuse is often followed by the abuser’s denial. Children typically comply with abuse, in behavior and by embracing the abuser’s false reality, under threat of emotional abandonment. Similarly in the sociopolitical sphere, increasing threats of cultural and economic dispossession have pressed working Americans to adopt an ideology that misrepresents reality and justifies their oppression. In society as in the family, there can be a compensatory narcissistic reaction to forfeiting one’s rights that, ironically, encourages feelings of power and specialness while facilitating submission." (The traumatic basis for the resurgence of right-wing politics among working Americans) "Before mass leaders seize the power to fit reality to their lies, their propaganda is marked by its extreme contempt for facts as such, for in their opinion fact depends entirely on the power of man who can fabricate it.” ― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism
    8
  20. “Extensive research has conclusively demonstrated that children’s social class is one of the most significant predictors—if not the single most significant predictor—of their educational success. Moreover, it is increasingly apparent that performance gaps by social class take root in the earliest years of children’s lives and fail to narrow in the years that follow. That is, children who start behind stay behind—they are rarely able to make up the lost ground.” -- Emma García and Elaine Weiss, EPI Report: Education inequalities at the school starting gate - Gaps, trends, and strategies to address them
    7
  21. It's very interesting how different what Christians do and believe are in contrast to the stories about and told by Jesus in the New Testament. If the hypothetical Jesus of the bible returned (unlikely lol), he'd be anti-Christian.
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  22. No they're not.
    5
  23. 1. "Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation." 2. "The probability that a certain person be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person." 3. "A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses." 4. "Non-stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid individuals. In particular non-stupid people constantly forget that at all times and places and under any circumstances to deal and/or associate with stupid people always turns out to be a costly mistake." 5. "A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person." ― The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity (Economic Historian Carlo Cipolla) 6. "Humans are the stupidest species in the ecosystem." "Cipolla’s quadrant highlights several fundamental features of those systems that can be described as both “complex” and “autocatalytic,” where the growth rate is proportional to the size of the stocks. These systems include living creatures, biomes, entire ecosystems, as well as human-created entities such as companies, organizations, and entire economic systems. The analysis of Cipolla’s quadrant, carried out using the Lotka-Volterra model shows the similarity of many phenomena driven by the dissipation of energy potentials: from life to commerce [26]. There are, indeed, some basic laws at work in these systems and when we use the term “law” for a physical system we mean that some factors are at work to keep it, if not perfectly regulated, at least within some boundaries. Cipolla’s quadrant tells us that these complex systems are all dominated by the same factors, but that these factors can operate in different ways. The simplest case is the predator/prey (bandit/victim) relationship, in which the predator seeks only maximum short-term profit. The result is periodical oscillations, homeorhesis. It is also possible to see the condition of “stupidity” where the actions of the actors in the exchanges lead to doom for everyone and everything. In ecosystems it is extinction, in economic systems, it is financial ruin. The analysis also shows the possibility for these systems to adjust in such a way to attain the condition that Cipolla describes as “intelligent people” and that in ecosystems goes under the name of “symbiosis.” As proposed by Lynn Margulis [20], symbiotic systems that go under the name of “holobionts” are the basic unit of the ecosystem. We may extend this definition to all kinds of autocatalytic complex systems, including those forming the human economy. But if holobionts are an efficient unit of energy dissipation, why does stupidity exist? In particular, why is it so common in the economy as Cipolla correctly notes? Cipolla’s description of stupid people is that “..some are stupid and others are not, and that the difference is determined by nature and not by cultural forces or factors. One is stupid in the same way one is red-haired; one belongs to the stupid set as one belongs to a blood group. A stupid man is born a stupid man by an act of Providence.” What Cipolla calls “an act of Providence” may be seen also as the result of the genetic setup of human beings. Indeed, humans are a relatively recent element of the ecosystem: modern humans are believed to have appeared only some 300,000 years ago, although other hominins practicing the same lifestyle may be as old as a few million years. Yet, this is a young age in comparison to that of most species currently existing in the ecosphere. So, humankind’s stupidity may be not much more than an effect of the relative immaturity of our species, which still has to learn how to live in harmony with the ecosystem. That explains what we called here “the 6th law of stupidity,” stating that humans are the stupidest species on Earth. It is a condition that may lead the human species to extinction in a non-remote future. But it is also possible that, if humans survive, one day they will learn how to interact with the ecosystem of their planet without destroying it. Acknowledgment. One of us (U.B.) would like to remember the figure of Carlo Maria Cipolla (1922-2000), whom he had a chance to meet in Berkeley in the 1980s. Cipolla was a brilliant and creative mind, but also a kind and open personality. His work, not just about stupidity, is still having an important impact on the way we see the world." ― The Sixth Law of Stupidity: A Biophysical Interpretation of Carlo Cipolla's Stupidity Laws
    5
  24. I appreciate you making this clarification.
    4
  25. “Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the Superman--a rope over an abyss. A dangerous crossing, a dangerous wayfaring, a dangerous looking-back, a dangerous trembling and halting. What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal: what is lovable in man is that he is an OVER-GOING and a DOWN-GOING. I love those that know not how to live except as down-goers, for they are the over-goers. I love the great despisers, because they are the great adorers, and arrows of longing for the other shore. I love those who do not first seek a reason beyond the stars for going down and being sacrifices, but sacrifice themselves to the earth, that the earth of the Superman may hereafter arrive. I love him who lives in order to know, and seeks to know in order that the Superman may hereafter live. Thus seeks he his own down-going. I love him who labors and invents, that he may build the house for the Superman, and prepare for him earth, animal, and plant: for thus seeks he his own down-going. I love him who loves his virtue: for virtue is the will to down-going, and an arrow of longing. I love him who reserves no share of spirit for himself, but wants to be wholly the spirit of his virtue: thus walks he as spirit over the bridge. I love him who makes his virtue his inclination and destiny: thus, for the sake of his virtue, he is willing to live on, or live no more. I love him who desires not too many virtues. One virtue is more of a virtue than two, because it is more of a knot for one's destiny to cling to. I love him whose soul is lavish, who wants no thanks and does not give back: for he always bestows, and desires not to keep for himself. I love him who is ashamed when the dice fall in his favor, and who then asks: "Am I a dishonest player?"--for he is willing to succumb. I love him who scatters golden words in advance of his deeds, and always does more than he promises: for he seeks his own down-going. I love him who justifies the future ones, and redeems the past ones: for he is willing to succumb through the present ones. I love him who chastens his God, because he loves his God: for he must succumb through the wrath of his God. I love him whose soul is deep even in the wounding, and may succumb through a small matter: thus goes he willingly over the bridge. I love him whose soul is so overfull that he forgets himself, and all things that are in him: thus all things become his down-going. I love him who is of a free spirit and a free heart: thus is his head only the bowels of his heart; his heart, however, causes his down-going. I love all who are like heavy drops falling one by one out of the dark cloud that lowers over man: they herald the coming of the lightning, and succumb as heralds. Lo, I am a herald of the lightning, and a heavy drop out of the cloud: the lightning, however, is the SUPERMAN.--” ― Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
    4
  26. "The devil's in the details, but so is salvation." — Admiral H.G. Rickover, Father of the US Nuclear Navy
    4
  27. Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this movie. I didn't catch your thoughts about one minor detail: How do you like them apples? (I couldn't resist!)
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  28. John Brown did nothing wrong
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  29. Thank you
    2
  30. He's literally summarizing from a book by actual psychologists talking about sensory processing sensitivities, not "empaths". Try harder.
    1